Zero Punctuation On Grand Theft Auto IV

Click here to see video

Well that was relatively fast, now wasn’t it? Yahtzee seems to have jumped on Grand Theft Auto IV just as quickly as the rest of the world,and for the most part he loves it, going as far as to inform us that he plans on playing it some more after the review is finished, which, as he says, is fucking unprecedented. He also seems to share my penchant for turning the cars in happy little circles whenever the handbrake is evoked, which eventually saw me resorting to the time-honored bouncing off of things method of turning the car. I am beginning to find I enjoy Yahtzee’s reviews more the more I enjoy the game he is reviewing, whether he is positive or negative. Having said that, one of the best so far.  {kotaku}

Gears of War 2

A List of Demands for Grand Theft Auto

Not even two weeks since its release and the ingrates at Kombo.com already have eight things they want to see in Grand Theft Auto from now on. Everyone has an ultimate GTA experience list, and I’m betting that GTA IV represents someone’s wishful thinking from the Vice City days (the controls represent mine). But some of these have already been introduced.

Co-op play was kindasorta in San Andreas (albeit offline) and everyone shrugged. To fully integrate that into the main game experience seriously disrupts the at-your-own-pace narrative of what is basically a cinematic video game. Multiple cities: also San Andreas — including (technically) Liberty City. Robberies: Vice City, although I agree, I wish they had them in San Andreas and here, too.

How about a Godfather-style intimidation engine? The first two missions for Vlad were laughable — throw a brick through a window? Bump into a van? (I did it with a Blista Compact, too). God damn, those clowns would pay protection money for their seat at the Yankees game if you breathed on them hard.

One thing I do not want to see, or wouldn’t use anyway, is an in-car view. I am constantly reliant on the elevated perspective of third-person driving, and always thumbing the right stick to peek before taking a corner or passing to the left on a hill. Lowering the POV and holding it inside the car would have you stuck in traffic half of the game.

8 Things We Want to See in GTA [Kombo.com]

A.S.S. [SHOZ] vs. [FOG]

thanks (SHO)MAVERICK3324 for the vid

Rockstar Explains GTA IV Multiplayer

Soon after Grand Theft Auto’s launch, when I went to start playing online matches, I noticed that the instruction manual was almost totally devoid of multiplayer details. In fact, the Brady Guide for the game, a virtual encyclopedia of GTA facts, was also missing any real information about multiplayer.

Normally the lack of instructions wouldn’t bother me because I never read them, but the nuances of matchmaking and party formation can be a little confusing in GTA IV. Fortunately, Rockstar must have realized that they left something out in their instruction manual because they’ve recently published a PDF dedicated just to multiplayer gaming.

The guide is filled with interesting tips and info. For instance, they explain how Party Mode work, something that has been driving me crazy since the launch. Turns out that when playing team modes, the game tries to find a similarly sized party to match you up with. In competitive modes it just fills up the slots with people and gets you going.

There are also plenty of usefull tips in the guide, like using blip settings to tweak your difficulty setting, and how auto-aim is an “awesome feature” that is often misunderstood and absolutely doesn’t level the playing field.

CLICK HERE n00bs:  Hit the jump for the full guide.

Cop Guns to Have Mini FPS Cameras

DC Lawmaker Wants Cop Guns to Have Mini FPS Cameras

A lawmaker in Washington DC has intro’d a bill to the city council that would require all police service pistols to have mini cameras attached to the barrel, which would start rolling as soon as the gun is pulled out of the holster. The tech is already being tested in Orange County, NY. Ostensibly, it’s to prevent bad shootings and prove officers acted in good faith, but really I can only think of how awesome an FPS cam would make Cops, like that one scene in the Doom movie, except with intoxicated perps instead of demons from Hell. If it works in DC, I could see this spreading to other police departments pretty quickly as a way to quell lawsuits and such. [NBC4 via The Register via CG]

SOCOM: Confrontation Impressions

We check out the latest SOCOM game and see what it will offer for online shooter fans.

By Dan Chiappini, GameSpot AU

Posted May 7, 2008 5:04 am PT

There was no real surprise when Sony announced that the much-loved SOCOM franchise would be coming to the PlayStation 3, but this time around, battle is being approached slightly differently. Developer Slant Six was on the show floor to give us a look at what it’s doing with the game.

Developed as an online-only multiplayer game, SOCOM: Confrontation will let 32 players duke it out across seven maps. Day and night variations of the locales have been thrown in for good measure, as well as both 16- and 32-player variants.

This is not the good guys up against terrorists scenario we’ve seen played out so many times before, but rather mercenaries versus commandos. Players will be able to select from teams such as the British SAS, US Navy Seals, French RPIMa, Spanish UOE, and German KSK. Each side features a unique special-forces weapon exclusive to that side, and the lack of a class system means that you’re able to customise your weapons loadout without restricting yourself to a defined role on the battlefield.

The game is still in a balancing stage, but the company did confirm that it will feature some form of both individual and clan unlockables via a persistent point system. Unlike Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which increases the range of selectable weapons as you progress, everything will be unlocked out of the box for SOCOM. Ammunition bonuses will be the suggested reward once you’ve received the required number of points.

The game seems to be tracking quite well visually, with highly detailed character models and chunky particle effects adding to the street shoot-out experience as our guide ducked and weaved in and out of crumbling buildings. The environment on show was dusty and did a good job of conveying the game’s African setting.

Audio plays a big role in this game, and the team is hard at work on nailing something that they’re calling Acoustical Environmental Modelling, which in a nutshell gives you a greater range of sounds to represent distance. It has also been confirmed that the game will support 7.1 surround sound.

SOCOM: Confrontation is due to ship exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in September 2008.

FourZeroTwo vlog

 

Pic of the Day

Fun to learn

Bill Nye educational parody of “The More You Ignore Me Closer I Get” by Morrissey from Bill Nye’s Momentum episode.

Brings up topic, do you guy’s remember this show ?   This show was very good for teaching science through everyday behavior.  I especially like the educational music parodies, this one in particular.